Washington- A federal judge on Saturday temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s shutdown of a historic golf course and park in Washington, DC, which President Trump wants to turn into a new “world-class championship” course.
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes ruled that the Trump administration cannot shut down. East Potomac Park and its golf course, but said the Trump administration was not required to actively manage either.
She rallied with a D.C. preservation group and two local golfers who argued that the closure of East Potomac Park, scheduled for Sunday, Nov. 15, was part of the Trump administration’s plan to redesign and replace the course with a championship-style venue designed by golf course architect Tom Fazio.
Reyes said the Trump administration’s justifications for the proposed course closures were pretexts, and said “the government is reverse engineering additional justifications for closing the park…While continuing to assert that it will close the park to follow the president’s directive.”
His order will last until November 28.
“We are grateful that once again a court has intervened to prevent irreparable harm caused by the Trump-Vance administration’s pursuit of yet another vanity project by the president,” said Catherine Carroll, senior legal counsel at Democracy Forward. “The administration’s inexplicable desire to destroy East Potomac Park would have wiped out a valuable park that could never be replaced, and we are honored to work with this coalition to secure this temporary relief.”
“The Court recognized that the National Park Service can limit access to its facilities where the public is at risk,” a Justice Department spokesperson told CBS News. “Nothing in the Court’s order prevents continued planning for the development of a world-class golf course. The Department of Justice will still vehemently defend the Trump Administration’s agenda in court.”
Reyes has for months overseen the challenge to the president’s plans for the East Potomac Golf Links, a public course in Washington that opened in the 1920s. The dispute intensified last month when the National Park Service informed the judge it would remove trees on the course and continued to cut down more than 500 trees over the course of a weekend.
Reyes then issued an order block the Trump administration to cut down additional trees and asked the Justice Department to inform it of any future actions the National Park Service plans to take on the golf course.
Mr. Trump, meanwhile, announced last month that East Potomac would close on Nov. 15 to allow work to begin on Fazio’s new design, with the renovated “world-class championship course” expected to open in about 15 months.
But during a court hearing Friday, Assistant Attorney General Stanley Woodward said he “would be shocked to learn that there is a contract” with Fazio or any affiliated entity finalizing new course plans and future construction.
Following Mr. Trump’s announcement, the Department of Justice notified the court Late last month, the Interior Department was working on a plan to close the course and would also temporarily close public access to the entire East Potomac Park, which includes not only the golf course, but also a road, a playground and recreation area.
The Trump administration argued that the entire park should be closed because of deteriorating seawall, safety risks to the golf course and because the organization that oversaw the course, the National Links Trust, would cease operating it effective November 15.
There are currently no plans in place to repair the seawall, according to the National Park Service, and it is unclear how long East Potomac Park will be closed. The new seawall is expected to cost more than $300 million and take at least two and a half years to complete, according to a proposal for the new golf course that the National Park Service submitted to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts last week.
The Trump administration said in a notice released Friday that it will seek a contract for work related to 20,700 linear feet of short line and levee infrastructure.
Lawyers for the preservation group and the golfers said the Trump administration created a situation in which the course would no longer have an operator, the National Links Trust, as of Nov. 15, and discovered areas of disrepair in East Potomac Park that needed to be repaired, effectively reverse engineering the decision to close the area.
Reyes also pressed the Justice Department on whether Mr. Trump’s order to close the park in order to renovate the golf course was the real reason for the November 15 closure date, or whether it was because of a long-standing need for repairs at the park, and the Trump administration was simply closing the park to make those repairs.
“If this is such an urgent situation … why wasn’t (East Potomac) shut down immediately?” Reyes asked the government, noting that thousands of runners participating in the Marine Corps Marathon passed through East Potomac Park last month.
Fazio’s new course design shows it occupying the entirety of East Potomac Park, eliminating the existing road around the peninsula and recreational space at its southern end.
Adam Gustafson, a Justice Department lawyer, said the government has “limited resources and discretion” and that “when the president speaks, agencies listen.”
“The agency has consistently stated that it will follow the law in reaching a final position on the filing of this park,” Gustafson said.
He argued that closing the park does not mean the Trump administration will immediately begin renovating the course, since the National Park Service must still pursue legal analysis and evaluations under federal environmental and historic preservation laws. The Commission of Fine Arts and the National Capital Planning Commission must also conduct their own reviews, Gustafson said.
The NCPC is expected to consider the proposal for the new course at a meeting on December 3.
Furthermore, Reyes also opened an investigation whether senior Trump administration officials at the Interior Department, Justice Department and National Park Service misrepresented facts to him in recent hearings and filings and violated ethics rules.
Reyes said she intends to appoint a former U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., Jessie Liu, to lead the investigation, which will determine whether government lawyers asked Jessica Bowron, acting director of the National Park Service, and Kevin Griess, superintendent of the National Mall and Memorial Parks, to omit or include certain information in statements about work on the golf course.
The Department of Justice opposes the appointment of a special master.
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